Care for dependent people law, is a change in the Spanish welfare system? Familiarism versus professionalism

Abstract

The new Spanish Care Service Act (LAPAD) enters in a critical phase due to budgetary constrains imposed by the Spanish central government. Anyhow still before a series of evaluations of and critics on the implementation of the new system brought up the idea that this is a law of good intentions, but it clashes in its application with the social political reality. There is another highly interesting aspect of the implementation of the new law: there are great differences between regions in its implementation, which could mean that we can’t speak of a homogeneous Spanish welfare regime. This would have implications for policy design, but also theoretical consequence for instante in the approach of welfare regimes.
The following article analyzes what have been the regional trajectories of the LAPAD. The aim is to see if there is some pattern of regional behaviour according to the specific context. The point of reference is the theory of welfare regimes complemented by the familiarism approach developed by Saracena and others. We ask a) if the LAPAD produce significant changes in the Spanish welfare regime and b) which are possible trajectories.